Chronic Exertional Compartment Syndrome

And so the journey began…

I met with an Orthopedic Surgeon in the middle of September. Prior to this consult meeting I had x-rays of my tibia and fibia to make sure I didn’t have any stress fractures. Once I met with my ortho surgeon, he told me that all was clear on the x-rays. We discussed Compartment Syndrome because I knew a couple of people who were diagnosed with this and had very similar symptoms to me. He agreed that my pain does in fact sound like Compartment Syndrome, but he wanted to rule out any other possibilities so he sent me for an MRI about an hour after the appointment.

I got the results of the MRI a couple of days later and again that was clear. So the next step to the diagnosis of Compartment Syndrome would be the pressure test. I had the pressure test done about a week or so after my first appointment. Everything was moving so quickly, but it was exciting because I was finally on the road to a diagnosis.

For the pressure test, my ortho surgeon inserted a needle into each of the 4 compartments in my legs to get an intial pressure. I then had to run around until the pain came back in my legs, but continue to run until it was unbearable. The greater the pain, the better for test purposes. I ran for about 20 minutes but started having pain 7 or 8 minutes into my run. I returned to the clinic and he again inserted the needle to test the pressure. He mentioned that if the pressure number went up by 5, he would consider that Compartment Syndrome. My back two compartments went from 15 to 25, and 16 to 28. I had Bilateral Chronic Exertional Compartment Syndrome.

The treatment for this: surgery. Surgery was scheduled for October 3rd. I was beyond excited to finally have a diagnosis and now a surgery that would “cure” me of my pain. The thought of pain free running in a month or so made me smile. After surgery was scheduled, my ortho surgeon contacted me and said that he wanted to have me go for an ultrasound of my legs the morning of surgery just to make sure I didn’t have a vascular problem in my legs. The ultrasound was scheduled for 7am and surgery was scheduled for 9:30am.